I do a lot of driving. And while sitting behind a truck the other day, I realised that we were all travelling along on air. Every vehicle had tyres and every one of those round things relied on compressed air to keep their rubber rolling along.

Air is one of the ‘take for granted’ things in life that demonstrates the shortcomings of relying on our vision to cement our beliefs. You cannot see air – but it is as real as the finger that the irate driver waved at you as he drove past.

Most of us know about air when we feel it. There is nothing like wind when we are on a bicycle that can affect progress so much. As bike riders, we have a better feeling for the air around us than most people – except sailors.

As we are bombarded by eye candy every waking moment, we get captivated by the power of vision and this makes us lose the use of the other senses. But life is more than just seeing things. Blind people are a perfect example of this. The lack of vision makes them more aware in other ways.

The most neglected part of life when we are obsessed by our reliance on seeing things are feelings.  Just as we can only feel the air around us, there are essential elements of life that we can only feel. There are no visual confirmations available that can be captured on camera. It is just intuition.

The ‘gut feel’ challenges the image in front of us, and we often go with the image. How often has the ‘gut’ feeling proven to be the better choice?

The essence of life is all about feelings – not just what we can see. Vision is the ‘red herring’ in life.